Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Tragedy Engulfs Middle East

The tragedy is that only one Israeli soldier is missing. To end this tragedy, all Israeli soldiers must go missing. Immediately. Permanently.

Israel has no "right" to existence, no more than apartheid South Africa had a right to existence.

Nation-states are not established nor preserved by right, but by force. Israel was established by force; by the force of British imperialism; by the forced dispossession of Palestinians; by the forced seizure of territory in 1948 and 1967.

The Egyptian military, those heroes of the Sinai crossing, that last true bastion of democracy and the Egyptian nation, are besides themselves with glee over Israel's attack on Palestinians.

Soon, some brilliant commentator will suggest that the "Western-inspired" revolt in Syria is all that is preventing Assad, that champion of the Syrian nation, another product of imperialism, from coming to the aid of the Palestinians.

The existence of a Palestinian people is a mortal threat to the existence of the nation-state, as no national formation can contain, much less resolve, the dispossession and expropriation at the core, its core. Hence, applause for the murderers, with whispered requests to be just a little less murderous.

3 comments
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The state of Israel has two strikes against it in comparison to former apartheid South Africa. It is not simply an apartheid state, but also an active colonial settler state. Settler colonialism is a feudal relic (and is why, contrary to the ideology of Cold war liberalism, the USA *does* have a real feudal past in its origin as a colonial settler state, a comparatively recent past considering that its most active phase occurred in the first 100 years of the existence of the North American Republic).

No wonder Israel's regional interests converge so naturally with that other regional feudal relic, Saudi Arabia, which *also* has no "right to exist" either.

Not sure I agree with the characrterization of settler-colonialism as a feudal relic, or maybe I do, but only if we consider all of capitalism a "feudal relic," which I think is extending the limits of historical characterization to the point of rupture.

I mean do we want to call the expansion of US capitalism after the Civil War a relic of feudalism?

Thank you for pointing out that Israel has no right to exist. The (brilliant, really, in my opinion) rhetorical device of answering any challenge to Israel's actions with the question "Don't you think Israel has a right to exist?" has by itself established that right in many uninformed and unquestioning minds. I think it should be answered with something to the effect; What is Israel's right to exist based upon?

Anyway, thanks also for putting the Palestinians in that very interesting context.